


Walking Papers

by peaceloveandjocularity, stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M, found family/ created family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:01:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25049563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peaceloveandjocularity/pseuds/peaceloveandjocularity, https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: Sometimes the Winchester clan isn't so very accepting. Or, family is what you make of it.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18





	Walking Papers

He didn’t cry. 

Having grown up as an immigrant kid in a rough neighborhood, he knew how to take a punch - even one aimed low and unexpected. A leather bag lay on top of the closet, so he shimmied up the shelves and threw it down, beginning to fill it. He hesitated when his hands found the Klinger Collection. He wore such things for himself, for comfort, but also for Charles. Wherever he went, he probably wouldn’t have the luxury. 

He took nothing he hadn’t created, wondering, for just a minute if he was going to be able to hold onto his job. He had a tidy amount in savings; even if the job was toast, he wasn’t starting from scratch. Shivering, he grabbed the quilt he’d made from the Major’s t-shirts and from his own and wrapped it around his shoulders. 

The orders - he couldn’t think of them in their true terms - had given him until Charles arrived home from work. He thought about calling Honoria, but that wasn’t really fair. She was Charles’ family. 

He knew where the bus stop was. From there he could go, well, anywhere. Maybe West. The important thing was to pack quick and light, to avoid handling anything freighted with too much emotion, and, most of all, to get gone. 

His mind got treacherous for a few minutes - thinking back, asking if he should have noticed anything and, if so, what? Charles hadn’t taken him to bed lately, but his workload had been not only large- but disheartening. But maybe this was one of the privileges of wealth he hadn’t known about; when you were done, you just sent a note, then came home later to an empty house that was back to being just yours. 

He was kneeling, trying to zip up a truly random collection of things into a dress bag, blanket still over his shoulders, eyes wet, hands trembling with the purest grief he’d ever felt, when Charles came into the room. 

For a moment, his brain refused to process simple English sentences about needing to walk away from work for a moment and fatigue and lunch; he heard the words just as cadence, lift, sound, and pause. 

Then Charles saw his eyes. 

“Darling, what has happened? What’s wrong?” 

“The note said  _ after work _ ,” Klinger reminded him, shaking the crumpled up piece of paper he hadn’t been able to release after it had been placed, by messenger, into his hand. “You didn’t give me enough time, Major.”

“Time to do what? What note?”

He tried to get closer but Klinger backed away with something in his eyes Charles had never seen - something horrible. He looked around and saw the opened drawers, the clothing stuffed into a bag. “Maxwell, are you leaving me?” 

Klinger made a high, aching sound - a keening noise that was pure grief. “You told me to.” The tears he hadn’t earlier permitted ran down his cheeks to fall on the bag and sparkle there. “Just… I can be out of here in ten minutes. Just give me that.” He had decided that the quilt was coming with him. Reading the note had chilled him right through to the marrow. 

“Darling, I don’t understand. I haven’t spoken to you all day.” It was his turn to be chilled as he realized that if he had not returned unexpectedly from the city, he would have come home, that night, to an empty house. 

“Please, Max. Explain this. Then, if you still wish to go, I will not stop you.” 

_ Wish? I  _ **_wished_ ** _ to spend my life with you, Major.  _

Forcing his fingers open, Klinger handed him the note. He wanted to throw it at him, but he just went back to packing, hoping he could remember where he’d put his tennis shoes. 

Charles read quickly - then re-read. If Klinger had been watching him, he would have seen the purest kind of rage come over him. 

Sitting the note aside gingerly as if it were dangerously fragile or toxic, he walked to the phone. 

“Yes? Hello. I assume that I do not need to explain the reason for this call? Good. Listen carefully, for this is the very last time you will ever hear my voice. You took a very foolish gamble today. You lost. If you ever try to hurt him again, I will make it the express purpose of my life to undo everything good in yours. I will dismantle your peace if it requires every penny of my fortune and every spare second of my time. Do I make myself quite clear? Excellent. Love to mother.”

Then he hung up. 

Klinger gaped at him. “What the hell was that?”

“A declaration of independence that was too long in coming.” He still sounded as he had on the phone - disbelieving and very, very cold. “Please come away from those bags, Maxwell. You are breaking my heart.” 

He went, picking his way through the mess to his side, hesitating, eyes full of questions. Charles sighed to see this. “You don’t trust me?”

“I just don’t know what to think. No one’s ever thrown me out by messenger before.” 

Charles drew him near and clung to him, head on his shoulder, drawing in his scent. “It was not  _ my _ message. Understand? I cannot live without you - and would not wish to.” 

Klinger hadn’t fully processed the things he’d said on the phone. He was still reeling, still catching up. “Who?”

_ I am glad this happened,  _ Charles thought then.  _ Some part of you hasn’t believed me all this time, hasn’t trusted that you are home.  _ “My father. Weren’t you listening?” 

“Hard to hear,” Klinger mumbled into his chest. “Hard to  _ breathe _ .” 

“Yes. I felt quite the same seeing you with luggage - which will be going in the garbage, I think.”

“What if you need to travel for work?” 

“I won’t.” He brushed his hair back from his forehead. “Darling, have you really felt that all this time? That I could just  _ let you go  _ with no warning?” 

_ Say no. Please.  _

Klinger shrugged. “Lots of people have. Friends, roommates, Laverne,” he began. 

Charles shuddered. “Please don’t say her name.” He was terribly - and, he knew, irrationally - jealous of the former Mrs. Maxwell Klinger. “I thought I made you feel safe. Secure.” His eyes were wet now. “Please tell me what I did wrong. Max, I hate this!” 

“It’s alright, Major.”

“It most certainly is not! Maxwell, I have spent three years building a life with you and if I had not come home early today - I was planning to take you upstairs, by the way - you would be gone from my life -  _ and I wouldn’t even know why!  _ Do you understand that I have done everything legally possible to bind myself to you? Your name is on my stocks, my insurance,  _ this house _ . Even if I wanted you gone, you have rights!”

Klinger shrugged again. “Rich people have lawyers. Figured you could undo it all if you wanted. None of it was mine to start with and I didn’t pay for it - why should I want it?” 

“Because _it is_ _yours_. As am I. Tell me what to do to prove it to you. Please.”

He saw that Klinger didn’t know what to say. Some part of him  _ really _ believed that he wasn’t the sort of man people kept around. Charles was not responsible for the existence of hat belief, of course, but it was there between them, now, and he could hardly bear it. 

Wrapping Klinger tighter in their quilt, he picked the slighter man up, ignoring the undignified squeak this won him, and dumped him into their bed. Pulling the covers up over them, Charles shut out the world and held him. 

“Can’t believe you were taking our quilt,” he teased. 

“I sewed it,” Klinger defended himself. “And it smells like you.” 

“I would burn this house to the ground if I had to face the smell of you in my sheets with no possibility of ever again taking you into my arms.” Then he added, “Darling, I’ve seen you fight for so many things. Why didn’t you say no? Why didn’t you fight for  _ me _ !?” 

“I won’t stay where I’m not wanted. If you were writing that… there wasn’t anything left to fight for, Major.” 

It was the saddest thing he’d ever heard. 

“Max, I will  _ never  _ leave you. I-I thought you could feel that when I moved inside of you… when I kissed you. I belong with and to you as I’ve never belonged anywhere else.” 

Klinger knew, then, what Charles wanted - what he  _ needed  _ to feel safe and whole again. He hadn’t written those awful words. He didn’t deserve to suffer. “I’m not gone,” he told the taller man, pulling him down. “I’m not lost.”

The mere possibility made Charles moan. Klinger covered his mouth, opening for him, wrapping around him to give him permission to make them one. The surgeon’s hands that had never failed him during an operation stumbled, fumbling to remove their clothes (and Klinger wasn’t even in anything complicated). Then he kissed him - slow, so slow - and prepared him the same way before gently aligning them. Holding himself up, dictating the depth and the speed of things, his restraint was impressive. Klinger could have told him that he wasn’t going to hurt him, but he knew that it wasn’t pain Charles was trying to avoid - not physical pain, anyway. He wanted Klinger to feel him, all of him, to feel what they became when they were joined this way. He wanted to make him realize how deep his mistake had been; when they felt like  _ this  _ together, separation was a possibility that could scarcely be entertained.  _ You are mine _ , Charles thought, easing his lover over that familiar edge.  _ Mine. Mine _ . 

And Klinger did call his name, left him shaking at the sound of him, head resting on the smaller man’s chest. Max expected Charles to keep on, to chase his own bliss, but he shifted and Klinger realized he was getting into his favorite position - the first truly sexual thing they’d ever tried. He moaned his encouragement; nostalgia rekindling his desire. That first time… he’d had trouble believing it, trouble staying in the moment, because seeing Charles stripped just to the waist had made his mouth go dry. He remembered trying to tell him how beautiful he was, how stunned Charles had seemed to hear it. Without looking, he reached over and fumbled in the bedroom drawer for the oil he kept there - vanilla bean and oak ash. The cool kiss of it, spilled across and between his thighs, made him thrash impatiently. 

But warmth followed. 

When it was over, they stayed in each other’s arms. 

“I would give you my name if I could,” Charles said. “You understand that, don’t you?” 

Klinger rubbed the back of his neck. “Maxwell Winchester is too fancy for me anyway, Major. I’m from Toledo.”

But Charles was giving this serious thought. “Max, I know your middle initial, but what does it stand for?” It seemed strange that he did not already know this. 

“Qeehal.” He spelled the English version. 

“No,” Charles decided aloud. “That is far too lovely to replace.” 

“What were you thinking?” 

“Maxwell W. Klinger,” he admitted shyly, eyes lowered. “I realize it isn’t the same, but I thought it might help you to see… to accept…” 

Klinger kissed him on the nose. “Maxwell Q. E. W. Klinger sounds great to me, Charles.”

“It really does?” 

“It really does.” 

***

The next morning, Charles was called back to wakefulness by the sound of someone walking around… and Klinger was still beside him. Then the events of the past day popped back into his mind and emotion surged through him in dark waves.  _ I wish I had been born Charles Smith rather than belong to a family that would seem to exile you from my side, Max.  _

A member of the family now entered the room, eyes flashing, and climbed into the bed on the other side of his boyfriend! 

“Honoria! What the hell are you doing!?” 

Though this had been an angry whisper, Klinger opened his dark eyes to find himself framed by Winchesters. 

Honoria wrapped herself around him. “You poor d-dear! You must have been so fri-frightened!” 

Klinger looked to Charles for help but he just rolled his eyes. “She loves you, too,” he reminded him. 

Honoria glared at him. “Better than you! Why didn’t you warn him that daddy would try a st-stupid st-stunt like that?!? You know how h-he is!” 

Charles felt a headache coming on. “It has been three years,” he defended himself. “I assumed we were past such… such sabotage.”

Honoria ignored him. “I was going to come over last n-night, but I rather h-hoped that Charles was enthusiastically convincing you to stay.”

Klinger looked back and forth between the siblings, amused. Charles was blushing clear down to the chest that he had hastily tried to cover with a robe when his sister had appeared. Winchester wanted to ask if nothing was sacred - this was  _ his  _ bed after all, not to mention his adorable boyfriend - but it was hard to be angry when she was clinging to Max that way, demonstrating that his loss would have been nearly as devastating to her as it would have been to Charles. 

“He’s here isn’t he?” he grumbled. 

“Yes, but you should have done better be-before so that he wouldn’t have left in the f-first p-place!” 

_ I am being criticized as a lover  _ **_by my sister_ ** _.  _ If he had believed in God, he would have ended this thought with:  _ Lord, take me now _ . 

Klinger was slightly more awake now and gently corrected Honoria. “I didn’t leave.” 

“You were going to, though. I saw the s-s-suitcases.” 

Charles flinched at that. What came after was worse. 

“I was going to call you,” his boyfriend told his sister, “but I didn’t think that was right.” 

Charles closed his eyes against a fierce pain. Honoria had become Klinger’s sister, too. “You may call me anytime. And if Ch-Charles ever proves more of an i-idiot than usual, you will stay with me. I won’t even tell h-him you’re there!” 

“He will not need to stay, Honoria, because he will not need to  _ leave _ . As he did not need to leave this time. And I swear to you that if you say one word about Korea I will scream.” His heart had been through a lot in too few hours. 

She gave him a sly look. “Korea.” 

Literally in the middle, Klinger said, “You two are brutal with each other sometimes, you know that?” Then he turned to Charles. “I didn’t know you were still hung up on that. I knew how you felt in Korea, Major. You were just mixed up over what to do.”

Charles sighed, glad to be forgiven. “Having met my family, you understand the source of so many of my problems, correct?” 

Klinger merely squeezed his hand.  _ You aren’t broken _ , his eyes said.  _ And I would want you even if you were _ . 

Then he looked them over - Winchesters all three if the name business of the night before had been sincere - and smiled. “Oh, I don’t think it’s such a bad little family, Major.” 

Snuggled against him, knowing he would not lose him, Charles knew he was right.

End! 

  
  
  



End file.
